Huh?
This on?
Yeah, this is for recording.
This is for recording.
Can you hear me okay?
Yeah.
I'm just gonna quote from two sources that
are very dear to me and part of
my...
Well, the one at least is part of
my daily devotional time, my utmost for his
highest by Oswald Chambers.
Are you guys reading that daily?
If you're not, you're missing so much.
I don't have a word for it.
I don't know another one who has the
depth of insight and the felicity of expression
as Oswald Chambers.
Piercing, and I'll give you an example of
what has inspired this morning's talk.
It's his devotional for December 1st called The
Law and the Gospel.
And he quotes always a scripture at the
top, this one from James, "...for whosoever shall
keep the whole law and yet offend in
one point, he is guilty of all."
And then he goes on to say, "...the
moral law does not consider us as weak
human beings at all.
It takes no account of our heredity and
infirmities.
It demands that we be absolutely moral.
The moral law never alters either for the
noblest or for the weakest.
It is eternally and abidingly the same.
The moral law ordained by God does not
make itself weak to the weak.
It does not palliate our shortcomings.
It remains absolute for all time and eternity."
As my wife says, what do you think
of them apples?
It's rare to hear anyone speak in such
a way to have that kind of a
conviction.
And I appreciated hearing it, reading it, being
reminded of it, and all of a sudden
with one fell swoop I was brought to
a realization of the profound departure from any
sense of the moral law as it affects
even Christian society and civilization.
We have become law-less.
We're not mindful of the moral requirement of
God.
And in fact, we have subscribed to the
kind of subversive view commended to us by
psychologists and sociologists that you can't help it
or hep it.
Is that how you say it in the
South?
You drop the L?
Can't hep it.
And that we're victims of society.
And I think especially of the black community.
Victims.
There's a victim mentality.
We're living only a few miles from a
North American Chippewa Indian Reservation and we see
a lot of that there.
That we're seduced into believing that we're helpless
victims and we couldn't help becoming alcoholics or
given to violence or the various things.
The reason is that no one has impressed
us with the absoluteness of the requirement of
God about thou shalt not.
I often in the my 35-year history
as a believer and as the founder of
a fellowship and so on and the various
issues that have come up wondered how believers
could have allowed themselves a certain line of
conduct that would have been met by an
obedience to the Ten Commandments.
Doesn't matter what your background is or your
heredity or your environment thou shalt not.
That God has said that overrides every other
consideration and we're under obligation not only to
acknowledge it but to do it.
And if we are intent in doing it
and find ourselves inert, weak and unable the
Lord has then a solution in the cross
of Christ Jesus.
But there has been a failure to apprehend
the cross because we have not been driven
to that cross by an earnestness that would
have been born by our failure to take
the moral requirement of God seriously.
And so the whole of society has become
pluralistic excusable sociologically minded and that mentality I
think has come into the church itself and
the ministers of the church are not as
attuned as Oswald Chambers to the Absoluteness of
God's requirement to make it known and we
ourselves are cutting corners and taking liberties and
that's what I hope to get into.
Why it is that we ourselves as ministers
are not as insistent in commending the requirement
of the law of the commandments of the
moral requirement of God to our congregants.
What is it about ourselves?
One of the phenomena of our time is
the leniency of judges today.
They find it very hard to pronounce hard
sentences.
I'm amazed in our local community a man
who was in charge of the finances for
the local university and the running of their
athletic program and their gymnasium and the whole
thing pilfered from those funds something more than
a hundred and forty thousand dollars and all
that was required of him with the acknowledgment
of his guilt was a statement of apology
some kind of financial penalty to pay back
some portion that he had spent and What
was it?
Civil works or what do they call that?
Huh?
Yeah, some kind of community service.
I don't want my God Is there no
real penalty murderers get away with like five
-year sentences three years they're off on probation
as if the whole severity of the law
and its requirement has been greatly diminished to
the detriment of society itself and Someone has
suggested that the judges are lenient because they
themselves are in sin because they themselves want
to be absolved from the requirement of Society
and of God and so it Disposes them
to be lenient with those who before them
because they desire leniency for themselves That is
to say they are not in a place
of righteousness that they can perform and require
righteous judgment Because if their own life was
on the line they themselves could not bear
the verdict The question is to what degree
is that true of God's ministers today?
This Decision to obey and seek to obey
the absolute requirement of God I believe will
be honored by God that there's something implicit
in the law and the commandment itself That
gives the grace to do it if we
have the intention and the seriousness to obey
it Something inherent in the law and in
the commandment in the requirement is also a
grace to perform it but we don't take
it seriously enough to consider it and Looking
back on my own conversion 35 years ago.
I myself Jewish Half-baked intellectual was a
determinist that is to say I couldn't have
it.
I was the victim of my environment I
was the victim of my heredity what I
was as a seducer as a An adulterer
was just the consequence of factors to which
I was born in which I have which
of which I had no control You know
when the first moment of realization came that
I was not a victim and that I
could choose and in fact the choosing of
a line of conduct is Itself the birth
of that which is moral and the absence
of morality is the absence of humanity We're
growing up a fearful generation of not only
immoral youth and adults a moral not immoral
a moral without any kind of moral sense
And that's why they can come into their
high schools and blast away 12 or 15
students and think that they're doing their God's
service Without a twinge of conscience even taking
their own lives Even suicide itself is not
a fearful consideration because there's no concept of
a God will judge Or that there's an
eternity in which that judgment will Take place.
I like the German word for suicide Selbstmord
self-murder Suicide is murder The fact that
you inflicted upon yourself does not absolve you
from the same penalty as if you had
murdered another You're murdering the peace of God's
creation How is it then that these kids
coming out of Christian homes could not only
murder their students But murder themselves with impunity
without even a twinge of conscience Are we
already seeing the fulfillment of the last days
prophecies that in the last days?
Not dangerous, but Paralysed praise God in the
last days perilous times shall come why perilous
rather than dangerous Because danger is apparent peril
is hidden Perilous time shall come men shall
be lovers of self lovers of pleasure More
than lovers of God disobedient unruly unthankful unholy
Without natural affection that is to say that
with impunity they can kill they can rape
they can loot There's no moral sense at
all Certainly, the church has got to be
indicted in its failure to communicate that and
the fear of God Traveling around the world
as I do and churches of every variety
and shape and hue I would say the
most conspicuous lack in the contemporary church here
and abroad is the absence of the fear
of God When you take away the moral
requirement of God and the eternal penalty for
violating it You remove the fear of God,
which is to say God as God you
continue to mouth phrases about him You can
intone and invoke the name Jesus, but the
God that you're in fact Celebrating or relating
to is not in fact the God who
is God So I Thought I had left
this back in my room to the praise
God I didn't because you see how I
mark it up Do you guys do that?
I?
Got suspicious in Czechoslovakia on my last overseas
trip when the man who came up to
be my interpreter was one of the elders
of the church fluent in English But when
he opened his Bible, I thought that I'm
this is not going to work Why because
first of all it was a small print
Bible?
How could the man even see it and
find the appropriate scripture and there was not
a mark anywhere in any of its pages?
Nothing in parentheses nothing in brackets.
No asterisks.
No arrows.
Nothing with a yellow marking pen How can
you read the scripture and leave it unmarked
or read anything and leave it unmarked?
I want to go back to my markings.
I want to see what it is that
caught my attention at the first and See
it yet again So I'm glad I didn't
forget This issue because the Lord has quickened
some things I think for this morning to
remove the moral basis for life is to
remove our humanity we're growing up a stunted
and perverse mankind because the moral quotient is
absent from their consideration and The church has
not sufficiently registered that on the consciousness of
its society So, how does that affect us
why am I sharing this with you this
morning?
Because we cannot require of others a standard
which we ourselves have not met nor intend
to meet our Predicament is that we ourselves
remain bound in unconfessed sins for want of
a confessor.
I Don't know any class of men more
in this predicament than ministers.
There's something about the professional mystique the ministerial
mystique by which a man comes up on
the platform and people look at him With
rapt admiration because he's supposed to be God's
man of faith and power Our whole environment
is so false so artificial so synthetic that
a man of God cannot be a man
He's got to be somehow of another species
and kind that the congregation can admire at
a distance but never hope to emulate They
don't know guys that you that you're struggling.
They don't know that you have your ghost
in your closet They don't know that you
are awake at night with dreams that are
horrible even to remember and that you're capable
of lust or worse being men and that
there's no one to whom you can go
to confess your struggle or the issue of
Fallenness or or any of the kinds of
things that you're of necessity bound to experience
all the more as you come under the
oppressive Attack of the enemy who wants to
traduce you and wants to bring you down
I'm often fond of saying that the church
is not only God's provision for the sheep
or for the shepherds also But it's only
a church of a certain kind It's certainly
not the church whose model is institutional and
whose platform is elevated and whose man is
certificated and isolated from an actual Involvement and
the unmasking of the truth of his own
condition to his own people as an early
believer 35 years ago the golden moments that
I remember is when the pastor broke on
the platform and behind the pulpit and Confessed
and admitted the defects and the deficiencies and
the weaknesses of his own life It's as
if the Holy Ghost flooded the room.
It was a spirit of truth Our hearts
were changed warm There was an identification with
the man making that kind of confession and
because he could make it we in the
pews could acknowledge that We also had our
defects our sins our hang-ups and that
the false piety that had prevailed particularly in
Pentecostal circles Had been rent by a man
who had the courage to express the truth
of his condition and to cry out to
the congregation for help not the picture I
Gave a message last summer.
We have a prophetical school up there in
northern, Minnesota On to whom shall we confess
our sins?
The scripture says confess your faults one to
another that you might pray one for another
and be healed To whom do we go
to confess?
What one of our elders or board members
God forbid?
That he could use something at some future
meeting to bring us down Because he's imprudent
and because it's for him.
It will be an ammunition Where do we
find a man appear to whom we can
let our hair down and take the mask
of piety?
Away and show our weakness and defect the
need and that that brother's prayer can actually
heal us and deliver us.
We're living unnecessarily with struggles and crises of
a moral kind That we cannot bring to
resolution because we do not avail ourselves of
God's own remedy Confess your faults one to
another one That's a public thing necessarily But
one to another one that he that that
one might pray for us that we might
be healed and delivered out of that Bondage
or hang-up or whatever that crisis situation
is How does that relate to what to
what I shared earlier?
I'll repeat myself We are not emphatic about
the absoluteness of God's moral requirement because we
cannot face it ourselves It's not our favorite
subject And if we do if we do
make it our subject and our life is
in is that odds or in disparity with
that subject?
Then to preach it is to become merely
professional Glib Able to speak something that is
not integral to our own conviction or our
own integrity And you know what?
I would say that condition is of all
things most to be feared God forbid that
we can come to a time when we
can preach any subject whether or not it's
consonant with our own conviction and the truth
and the integrity of our own lives and
do a masterful and successful job of it
If it's going to be apostolic and life
-giving the man has got to be his
message And where there's a disjuncture between the
man and what he proclaims what we get
is something synthetic artificial Religious it doesn't affect
anyone.
They've heard a good biblical word.
They leave unchanged and continue in their own
liberty in Transgressing the moral requirements of God
and falling short of the full humanity that
the moral requirement brings Got the picture So
I want to spend the rest of my
time Subject of to whom shall we confess
our sins and our faults because when I
finish sharing that at our Discussion table there
in northern, Minnesota.
There were at least a half dozen or
more Kleenexes completely saturated with my tears.
I Was not speaking academically I was speaking
out of the groaning of my own condition
and need to whom shall I confess who
is there in my fellowship?
Who is there with whom I'm in a
relationship that I could trust with with these
private aspects of my life Who will not
at some later time use it?
Who is there qualified to hear that confession
and how important is that confession because if
it does not take place there's a backlog
there's a log jam Something in our spirits
and in our inner man is being hemmed
up We have not the liberty the freedom
the fullness to communicate to God's people the
things that would bring life to them and
Therefore the result is we become play actors
Professionals who are able to put together a
good biblical word But it's not related to
the reality of our life and therefore it
cannot be spoken with the depth of conviction
that it deserves the unreality of play acting
of Becomes a kind of biblicism or sermonizing.
I can't think of anything more pitiful than
a church that is sermonized And in fact
that probably is the truth of most Sundays
everywhere in America You say well, what's the
alternative?
It's the Word of God that becomes an
engrafted word a Liberating word a life-giving
word.
There's all the difference between a mere sermon
However biblical and the Word of God spoken
out of the truth and condition of the
life of the man consonant with that word
So rather than a convicting word, it's merely
a professional word a biblical word a sermon
and We lose contact with reality with our
own center with our own authenticity I don't
know if you guys have that problem.
You know, there's a time when I I
brought a moratorium on my own speaking I
took a voluntary Sabbatical because I had come
to the point where I was hearing myself
repeat myself I had come to the point
where things that were original and given of
God were now so threadbare So well-worn
that they were rising up in my consciousness
and I was repeating what was originally given
But was not now not being spoken by
the same Authentic givingness of God as it
was at the first and I knew that
when I came to that place.
I needed to halt Oftentimes I'll get up
to speak I'll choke and splutter and Hammond
Hall, what am I waiting for?
Why can't I just launch out immediately because
I have not found my own Center The
atmosphere in the room the worship that has
preceded the message not always of the best
kind the most conducive to the word In
fact very often in opposition to the word
has left me a bit discombobulated.
I can't begin to launch out I I've
got to make contact again With the center
with the authentic root of my own life
in God before I can open my mouth
We ought to take more time for that.
The world does not hesitate to give it
to athletes They don't go running out on
the quarter into the boxing ring.
They have already warmed up in the dressing
room They come into the ring sweating and
then they still prance and dance and and
limber up Before the contest begins and we
are supposed to be men instantly up on
the platform and bang the gong rings and
we're ready to deliver You cannot help but
become professional Affected Ministerial a style and who
is there in your congregation who's going to
call that to your attention?
And say brother Jim or whoever I just
been noticing in these last few Sundays You're
your word and the way in which you
bring it is becoming somewhat stilted your voice
is becoming Stentorian it's like a rhetoric a
professional delivery.
You've lost your naturalness I had to say
to a Assemblies of God pastor somewhere in
the Buffalo area my last time out He
was full of gusto and bravado and sweeping
gestures And he was the man of overcoming
faith and I knew that I knew that
I knew that to see this man as
BVDs To see him as a real in
fact is as a remarkable a radical distance
from what he was representing to the congregation
Everything was hyped up voice the manner and
as I left the room and the Lord
Dropped a bomb that Sunday morning So at
odds with the whole tone of what had
been going on Sunday by Sunday in a
word Reality came in a moment of time
and the people were stunned not only for
the word But the manner in which was
it was presented in natural and unaffected Tolerance
and earnestness in reality It was devastating for
them in a good way, and I said
to this brother at the door as he
was saying goodbye I said I beseech you
brother.
Please forsake this hyped up manner of speaking
But Artie said there has to be a
model of the overcoming you know believer to
encourage them to the same I said if
you're overcoming it doesn't have to be expressed
in this hyper way the truth of it
will be communicated Even when you speak naturally,
but there's something false in the image that
you're projecting There's an unreality and if the
church is unreal Saints.
What can we hope for in the world?
The world is dying from its unreality from
its dream factories from its Star Wars from
all of its Entertainment craze, I mean I've
been alive long enough from a depression, baby
to watch the remarkable Radical consumerism that has
swept American society and a great passion and
appetite for entertainment for distraction for fantasy They
love to see cities flooded with water and
great upheavals and catastrophes and then go home
chewing their gum The heck of it is
those catastrophes are coming And they're ill-prepared
to expect them or to experience them because
they're living in a fantasy Dream world by
which the world is stuffing its pockets and
the church is not crying out well, you
know what I did I Wrote a letter
to the editor against Star Wars against the
promotion that I resent having to go into
a market and find six-foot cutouts of
these bizarre Demonic creatures that are the Star
Wars Panoply of characters looking down on me
if I take something off the shelf that
I can't buy a can of Pepsi-Cola
without one of its images of a devil
on it And that this has gone too
far That this is an imposition upon our
freedom that we have no choice no matter
it crowds in on us even in the
stores in the marketplace the concessions the Franchises
it engulfs us, and I'm raising my voice
in protest and crying out to the Christian
parents Who have allowed their kids to go
in their sleeping bags and sleep on the
sidewalk outside the theater?
They'd be the first one with the doors
open on the first day to see that
film I said when when's the last time
they ever did that for a Sunday service
at the church?
What is it?
That's more compelling in that theater than what
we are offering in our churches that they're
willing to spend a night out in the
cold in a sleeping bag to be the
first one in How many hundreds of thousands
of employees were dismissed from work in order
to attend the theater that day that their
companies recognized?
It's too big for us to fight against
Hey guys, where our world is going sick,
and we're the guardians of truth morality and
righteousness and are silent We witnessed the princess
Diana's funeral and didn't cry out.
I Against the great travesty of the faith
of celebrating this jet-setter in her Immoral
affair with a Palestinian playboy that ended in
violence as somehow deserving the highest form of
recognition of Christian funeral in Canterbury Cathedral with
the highest prelates and and ministers of that
church in tones of great solemnity as if
this were a saint With the flag being
flown at half-mast at Buckminster Palace, and
it took six weeks to clear away the
tons of flowers that were heaped up around
her home and the gardens and the walls
and people signing the book I'll tell you
if anyone raised his voice that day against
the Diana cult which by the way it
has today become There are Diana cult churches
in England where she's worshipped as a goddess
If Someone had raised the voice they would
have stoned him as they would have stoned
Paul for opposing the Diana cult But not
to raise the voice is to leave the
church not only disadvantaged, but permanently morally crippled
You say what good would it have done
to raise the voice to write a letter
to the editor to sound some opposition?
I don't care what good it would have
done.
I'm not expecting it's going to do any
good You can't your your little your lone
voice is not going to counter this tremendous
flood of pap But not to sound your
voice Has implications for you that are irrecoverable
to be silent is to be condemned There's
something that requires our speaking on these things
as the guardians Appointed by God over the
issues of truth morality and righteousness and our
silence condemns us and our silence What reinforces
and condones those things as if we agree?
So I'm being reminded in these days of
a time when I was in East Germany
before the wall came down I'm upstairs in
my attic room and downstairs are about half
a dozen elders of the church of that
East German city I've been there for several
days and now this is a goodbye And
they're waiting for a final word for the
church and its leadership, and I'm upstairs looking
to the Lord And I'm writing on the
back of an envelope And I come down
with my envelope and I say to these
men your first obligation Is to confront the
communist authorities and to oppose their Program their
propagandistic program, which is a lie It is
ubiquitous.
You know that word like a phone booth
on every corner So is their science German
-soviet friendship for 45 years?
Of alcoholism was the highest in all of
Eastern Europe Because I believe that God has
framed us and made us to live in
Righteousness, and if we are compelled to live
in an environment that is unrighteous that is
untruthful Our bodies our physiologies themselves will react
against it will be driven to alcohol to
stupefy our minds Because our minds are being
attacked in something.
That is the lie I said you guys
have an obligation to stand for what is
made in God's image and to go to
these communist authorities and say In view of
our call and our responsibility to stand for
what is made in God's image We oppose
this assault that has come upon the minds
and souls of men in this relentless campaign
of propaganda And we ask you to stop
it What an insane request you know that
you're not going to be taken seriously You
know that you might be opening the door
to a concentration camp for yourself.
Why do it?
because Integrity righteousness and truth and your calling
in God as the ministers of God Requires
an end to silence.
That's why it's not the issue of whether
it's going to succeed It's the issue that
we cannot afford to be silent Have
you guys ever read Dietrich Bonhoeffer's life together
as we say in Yiddish mama mia this
This is superb.
I just said to Adam this morning reading
it again That I would think that this
would be required study in any seminary any
Bible school that trains ministers I just want
to give you a little taste over the
issue of the confession of our sins one
to another The depth of insight that this
dear martyr had Is astounding he makes it
really in fact the whole issue of the
church as the church That the final breakthrough
to fellowship does not occur because Though they
have fellowship one with another as believers and
devout people they do not have fellowship as
the undevout as sinners The church is only
the church when it recognizes itself as sinners
being saved by grace Not to acknowledge that
and for its ministers to acknowledge that about
themselves as well Leaves the church in a
mentality and a state of being devout It's
a false artificial and pompous atmosphere where he
says no one dares allow himself to acknowledge
the truth of his sin, but the fact
is that we are sinners and So we
remain alone with our sin living in lies
and hypocrisy Now he says you are a
sinner a great desperate sinner, you know what
they have you thought about Paul I'm the
chief of sinners When did Paul make that
statement is he referring to his pre conversion?
Or is he referring to his present condition
as the chief apostle of the church?
I think it's the latter In fact if
you have noticed as you've gone on in
the faith That the deeper you come in
the knowledge of God and of his way
and of his understanding the issue of your
sin becomes much more apparent No way, is
it more conspicuous than for the man who
has to perform spiritual things?
Maybe it's not as evident for the man
in the world But for the man on
the pole on the platform and in the
pulpit to have to deal and speak things
of a spiritual kind shows yet more acutely
the truth of our condition and That there's
no accident that God calls The prophet Ezekiel
son of man son of man.
Can these bones live son of man prophesied
son of man?
What is he doing?
Does he have to remind the prophet that
he's the son of man?
Yes Because the prophet has the uncanny paradox
of having to speak not only the Word
of God, but to speak the Word of
God as Very God he is the mouthpiece
of God while at the same time.
He's acutely conscious of his humanity He sweats.
He's weak.
He's confused.
He's doubtful.
He's fearful.
He's anxious He's concerned for how he's going
to be heard how he's going to be
received.
Oh son of man So there's no one
more acutely or should be more acutely conscious
of His humanity than those who are called
to proclaim from their earthen lips the words
of God That's why Paul saw himself as
chief of sinners But there's an answer for
God when we acknowledge that that is our
condition Because he comes as the sinner that
you are who loves you who wants you
as you are He does not want anything
from you a sacrifice your work.
He wants you alone.
My son.
Give me your heart This message is liberation
through truth.
You can hide nothing from God It's astonishing.
We were talking on this trip.
What is the fear of God?
How do you define that?
What is it so critical so essential to
the truth of the church?
And I've never heard anyone really seek to
define it.
We talk about it and around it, but
how much do we understand it?
and I say one of the evidences of
its lack is the liberty that we take
even as ministers as if God were not
God as if he were not omnipresent as
if he were not Omniscient as if he
did not only hear and see us in
what we say and do but even hear
the secrets of our hearts Even understand and
knows our thoughts How then do we allow
ourselves the liberty of thoughts that are incongruent
and not in keeping with his holiness?
It's an evidence that we don't really think
that God is seeing and hearing That's the
meaning of the fear of God It's an
ever-present awareness that very much affects not
only our external behavior, but our inward disposition
We don't allow ourselves the luxury of thoughts
and contemplations that are incompatible with God If
we believe who he is, you see what
I mean?
So this message is liberation through truth and
Through him men could be saved as sinners
and only so could they be helped all
sham was ended in the presence of Christ
Do you hate sham?
Do you hate pretense?
Do you hate duplicity?
Do you hate play-acting which is the
meaning of the word hypocrisy putting on a
mask?
Giving the appearance of something which is not
you have it all together.
God's man of faith and power While inside
and inwardly you're trembling you're aware and conscious
of your weakness the contradictions of your life
The difficulty of your own teenage children the
unhappiness of your own marriage the sexual problems
all the kinds of things the fantasies The
erotic things the temptations, you know all that
But you purport yourself and carry yourself in
such a way as to give no evidence
at all That's false And if we're not
about truth and about reality, what are we
about?
I?
Would say the church is God's provision for
a mankind that's God's plumb line from heaven
to show that there's another standard that makes
for sanity and That we would not only
speak this but we represent and depict this
in the character of our own life and
being and Who's more at the heart of
this whole enterprise of God than his ministers
for us to be diligent toward the truth?
To keep our hearts with all diligence to
be jealous about infraction about play-acting to
be immediately conscious when we feel ourselves drifting
off and becoming a bit professional and ministerial
and Instantly to despise that and cry out
to God and come back again to the
place of naturalness before God and before men
To despise any Affectation that would give the
appearance and the impression to those hearing us
or viewing us that somehow We're made of
different to other stuff than they So the
breakthrough comes in confession, it's the breakthrough to
community the difference between church as an institutional
Sunday setting and the Apostolic reality of a
people whose life is together the breakthrough comes
in confession Because in the darkness of the
unexpressed The sin or the struggle poisons the
whole being of a person.
It'll it'll corrupt the whole being of a
nation I think it did that for Germany
It was not just German liberalism that made
the way for the advent of Nazism.
It was German piety It was German orthodoxy
as well as liberalism.
Both were phony and Flaky one was a
liberal disregard of the Word of God and
the other was a mechanical and external Attention
to Pietistic living but not to reality and
in that vacuum of unreality in the absence
of apostolic Verity in came the demonic thing
of Nazism with a bang and corrupted and
took possession of an entire nation the advent
of Nazism and the systematic annihilation of the
Jewish people of European Jewry and the World
War two that threatened the whole of Western
civilization Can in fact be laid at the
door of a church that was defunct even
while it was either liberal in disregard of
the Word of God or pietistic and orthodox
technically correct, but whose life was not true
We should learn from that history because I
believe the issue is going to come to
our own shores So Sin must be brought
into the light the unexpressed must be openly
spoken and acknowledged All that is secret and
hidden is made manifest It's a hard struggle
until the sin is openly admitted the last
stronghold of self-justification is abandoned the sinner
surrenders He gives up all his evil He
gives his heart to God and he finds
the forgiveness of all his sin in the
fellowship of Jesus Christ in his brother You
guys have a brother?
Is there one in your congregation or one
in your ministerial fraternity who's a brother to
whom you can go?
I've had a lot of activity in Germany.
The German word is sales saga Which means
concern for one soul everyone has a sales
saga who is careful for this So, you
know, they found out the guy who's living
in Frankfurt his soul Keeper lives in Munich
and they see each other about once every
three months four months five months That's a
cop-out that is exactly the kind of
orthodox and pietistic devices that Brought corruption to
Germany before if there's a man who's watching
over your soul He needs to be a
man with whom you're in daily relationship Where
he sees you in the various aspects of
your life and stress and the reality of
it and not just on some distant Sunday
To whom do we know and whom can
we trust to confess our sins with a
brother?
Who is really a brother on that daily
basis the whole of our ministerial system?
Militates against it because it cultivates the ministerial
mystique by which you're not to expose your
frailty and weaknesses to the congregation But be
detached as if you already have it together
It gives them a false sense of what
you are and a sense that they in
the pews poor souls Can never aspire to
you lofty condition and you both go on
in terrible and reality together That's religion.
That's Christendom.
That's death Do you have a brother?
And I cried out and I saturated a
half a dozen Kleenexes because we're living in
community There were about 30 of us on
160 acre farm.
This was a willful choosing I have come
out of the Baptist Church out of the
local evangelical church out of Pentecostal ism out
of full gospel out of all of those
things because there was an artificiality this mere
Sunday relationship Is not the reality out of
which a real witness to Jews can come
At that community is the name of the
game.
It's not an option It's the very definition
of what church in fact is but who
has a stomach for it We like our
privacy We want to go from our sweaty
Sunday back to our house by the pond
or the lake and away from the fray
We don't want to be open on Monday
to seeing the same faces here in the
same situations We like a private of privatistic
lifestyle and the world has encouraged it.
They love Sunday Christianity They'll even give you
a tax-deductible benefit if you'll maintain it
But don't become so radical as to have
a shared common life Daily going from house
to house daily breaking bread breaking down these
Institutional things and coming into the apostolic reality
and the glory that the church knew at
the first the world would not look too
kindly on that But even with that We
know what a struggle it can be and
I've said many times in our own community
You know But for the want of one
thing This community can become only a trailer
court The fact that we're living on the
same property and just a few moments walk
from each other's houses does not in itself
Bring the reality of community.
It can become only a trailer court unless
you avail yourself of that proximity Unless you
desire the visit of a brother who comes
unannounced while you have your feet up on
the coffee table Watching the football game when
he thought you were studying scripture You see
what I mean?
There's so much pretense so much phoniness that
only this kind of grit of a daily
reality is the antidote of God against it
So in confession the expressed acknowledged sin has
lost all its power it has been revealed
and judged as sin Now the former sinner
stands in the fellowship of sinners who live
by the grace of God in the cross
of Christ Jesus He can confess his sins
and in this very act find fellowship for
the first time This is what keeps us
from fellowship fear intimidation being found out that
our false side will Will be revealed if
we allow ourselves any kind of intimacy and
real relationship one with another we keep each
other at an arm's length We're polite.
We're cordial but no more because if we're
more than that It opens the door to
the revelation of the truth of our condition
for which we fear And I'm inviting us
all to press through the fear and find
the grace of God and the profound provision
He has given for us in confessing our
faults one to another So The sin concealed
separated him from the fellowship made all this
apparent fellowship a sham The sin confessed has
helped him helped him to find true fellowship
with the brethren Jesus Christ the confession is
to one But the fellowship is to all
The sin that has prevented true fellowship has
now been met in confession with one but
now though the rest of the body is
not aware of what has transpired between this
one and that one they receive the benefit
and A man like me who travels and
is in various churches of every kind of
description Ministers conferences the moment I enter a
room I Have a kind of sensitivity to
catch.
What is the corporate?
Personality of those who have congregated and we
try to drown it out with our amplifiers
or in other ways to affect Something that
will disguise it, but we are the sum
total of the truth of our lives and
when we come together That is what affects
our atmosphere.
That's what will affect the communication of God's
Word the receiving of God's Word The effect
of God's Word is dulled and nullified Depending
on the reality of the truth of those
that are hearing it And if when and
if each life is a private island unto
itself with its own Secrets of the unconfessed
things we bring all that baggage into the
room and expect this guy to play some
kind of spiritual roulette and come up with
something that's going to penetrate all that when
he himself is in a fix and A
struggle that he dare not acknowledge to anyone
Little wonder that our Christianity has become a
mere Sunday culture little wonder that it has
not affected the Jewish community at all We're
going to move them to jealousy with what?
If we Jews are anything we can see
right through Pretense and false falsity, but while
you guys were subscribing to Jimmy Baker and
all of that stuff These Jews would see
them for a moment on TV set and
flick it away.
They know a self The aggrandizing ministry when
they see one they know what is false
and phony we've been grounded in truth and
reality Hey when you live a life of
persecution for centuries It does something to sharpen
your sensibility of what is true and what
is false the church has not affected Let
alone influence Jews.
I was not saved by the witness of
the church But by the sovereign mercy of
God that pursued me for 14 months as
a hitchhiking Jewish Atheist and ex-marxist and
only because that his pursuit was released by
one of my former students and her mother
who prayed for this atheist But not I
was lived in a Christian country 34 years.
It meant nothing It was no more impressive
than any synagogue, and I was a seeker
after truth So confession occurs
in confession occurs the breakthrough to the cross
Confession is the presence of her brother in
the presence of her brother is the profoundest
kind of humiliation.
That is the cross There the old man
dies a painful shameful death before the eyes
of her brother It is painful, but yet
more painful to retain the sin than to
confess it It was none other than other
than Jesus Christ himself who suffered the scandalous
public death of a sinner in our stead
He was not ashamed to be crucified for
us as an evildoer In order that we
may in truth share in his cross the
cross of Jesus Christ destroys all pride We
cannot find the cross of Jesus if we
shrink from going to the place where it
is to be found Namely the public death
of the sinner So there's a deep pain
and humiliation before a brother which means that
we experience the cross of Jesus Which becomes
our rescue and salvation the old man dies,
but it is God who has conquered him
now We share the resurrection of Christ and
eternal life He even goes so far to
say as that the confession of sin is
the renewal of baptism That the joy of
baptism is conferred afresh with every confession of
sin Just a fresh way of appreciating how
grand a provision God gives us in our
brother That's the very definition of what a
brother is and to say brother and slap
someone on the back in the foyer of
the church Who's not a brother is a
sham And we ought to be dead set
against all sham all pretense all appearances It's
going to take this kind of diligence this
kind of pain this kind of suffering this
kind of a cross To maintain the truth
of God that a brother may be a
brother.
But what kind of a brother is it
to whom we can confess?
If the breakthrough in confession brings new life
And the dark night of secret sin is
given over to whom shall we confess Except
Someone who himself lives beneath the cross is
himself a forgiven sinner and knows that he's
capable of any and every sin that Someone
will have the courage to share with him
even a minister There are not many such
brothers You know why because of the environment
that we have allowed to prevail in our
churches is not the conducive to the formation
of them We're responsible for that environment and
when we encourage men to truth and to
reality and to bearing their hearts We're going
to find men who will have experienced the
cross and to whom we can go in
safety that they're not going to use our
confession as some retaliation, but hold it with
respect and with Propriety and prudence because they
themselves know themselves to be sinners saved at
the cross That's the church that's reality that's
the heart and marrow of the whole thing
Well, he just ends with two warnings that
We don't grant to ourselves our own absolution
and that the feebleness of our Christian obedience
is to be found precisely in the fact
that we are living on self-forgiveness and
Not a real forgiveness Not worth the price
of the book doesn't this man see through
that many of us are living in an
assumed forgiveness that we have obtained in our
own little private confession to God, but it's
not a true forgiveness because we have not
gone horizontally to men and We assume that
that's a true one.
Then how comes that it's still lingering.
How come we're still occupied with the same
hang-up How come that the thing that
defeats us?
Still lingers because it has not been a
true breaking with sin It has only been
a private absolution a subjective thing that we
have performed to save us the embarrassment and
the pain of the cross But it does
not bring its answer We're living on self
-forgiveness and not a real forgiveness and self
-forgiveness can never lead to a breach of
sin God gives this certainty only through our
brother our brother breaks the circle of self
-deception It's in the reality of the other
person that the issue of sin is really
met and we experience It's the liberation anything
else is a self-assumed and self-perpetrated
Absolution that doesn't work.
God is not mocked.
He's not a phony baloney.
He's not going to go along with our
pretenses He's after truth and authenticity because he
knows that Eternity is at stake life and
death is at stake for others.
And if we become a sham performing Church
the lives will go untouched and Not be
saved out of hell and out of death
And the second danger And I'll end with
this is let him God against ever making
a pious work of his confession If he
does so it will become the final most
abominable vicious and impure prostitution of the heart
The act becomes an idle lustful babbling Confession
as a pious work is an invention of
the devil What kind of confession is that?
It's an inadequate confession It's a general confession
rather than a specific and a concrete one
it avoids really mentioning and Signifying the real
and acute problem.
It speaks in general terms and becomes an
impure pious confession that is false a lustful
babbling an invention of the devil Confession as
a routine duty is spiritual death So You
know what follows this the joyful sacrament of
communion imagine coming to the communion table clean
Cleared forgiven really forgiven because the power of
the sin has been broken both in confession
to God and confession to men The vertical
member and the horizontal and we can come
to the communion table and Celebrate the blood
and the body of the Lord in truth
for if we make that a feigned Liturgical
and ceremonial thing without content and without reality
without truth.
We have all men are most to be
pitted It has not affected anything we've quaffed
back a little plastic cup and we leave
the room unchanged It has not been impartation
of his life Which is only given on
the condition of reality and authenticity and the
community of believers who are forgiven sinners So
I want to pray for that Okay So
I thank you Lord for giving me a
little extra time This is too precious too
important too significant to be rushed through these
men didn't have to hear from another slick
Operator who can tell them about evangelism to
Jews, although I can tell them You had
a much more earnest agenda this morning and
one that is critical for all the church
and critical for its ministers And Lord I
ask That where the shoe fits will wear
it that our hearts will be open for
the the Bobbed word that your word will
be as a dagger and as a sword
my God to cut into us God forbid
that we have become play actors professionals ministers
who conduct ourselves and carry on the kind
of sham life our poor wives are Suffering
for that exact thing because they have an
inward flame of integrity and they are chafed
In their inner being when they hear the
husband's performing Because who knows them better and
who has seen them in their weakness and
defect and in their BVDs Than these wives
and know the disparity between how they professionally
deport themselves and what is the truth of
their life altogether?
My god you wore a seamless robe You
are an indivisible God There was no separation
between your ministry and what you were in
yourself You were the message and we ask
again that you would bring forth at the
end of the age Ministers of this kind
who can model that reality and bring their
congregations into that reality in hope that the
Jewish community roundabout Observing and perceiving that reality
that is not a mere Sunday piety will
be moved to jealousy to believe and so
And the age blessed is speaking my god
may it go out to many through the
tape and may it bring about a depth
of Repentance that we have overlooked and have
run from Toronto to Pensacola to find Alternatives
to the shame and the pain of coming
to the cross we wanted an uplift something
to correct our grayness and not Recognizing the
need to be dealt with at the root
in the heart of our own problem in
the locality where we are in the Fellowship
where we are in the brothers with whom
we are related.
We didn't have to run from Dan to
Bersheba It was right before us if we
only had the courage to avail ourselves Bless
your ministers Lord I pray and bless your
church through your ministers and bless society through
your church and we thank and give you
praise in Jesus name Amen